Tag: Chrome

In the latest stable channel build for Android, Chrome 64, there is a new automatic URL shorter for those long, unwieldily URLs from shopping sites and other locations.  The new feature was uncovered by the team over at Android Police and should make sharing of URLs a little bit easier.

The new feature is used when you use the Share feature in Chrome for Android.  When you share a URL or copy it to the clipboard, a smaller version of the URL copied.  You can then share it with whatever apps or contacts as you would normally.

Progressive Web Apps, or PWAs, are the next big trend in browsing tech.  Designed to give an app-like experience on the web, PWAs are something that Google has been pushing hard as well as Apple and Microsoft.  All three companies, as well as Firefox are all planning to roll out support for the technology this year but Google appears to have the jump.

With Chrome 64, you have the ability to change flags within the browser to enable Progress Web Apps.  While technically not support – generally most flag settings are officially supported – it does work and you can give it a try to see what all the hubbub is about before it gets here in full swing later this year.  In this How To, I’ll show you which flags to enable to try out a PWA experience.

Starting today, the Chrome browser for Windows, MacOS and Linux will start blocking intrusive adverts on sites to give a better user experience.  Google had announced that these types of ads would be blocked back in December starting today after announcing their agreement with the Coalition for Better Ads last summer.

If you don’t remember, for desktops, ads that do the following risk being blocked:

• pop-up ads
• auto-play video ads with sound
• prestitial ads with countdown
• large sticky ads

For those who have the ad blocker enabled in Chrome on their desktop, you will no longer see these ads.

In their continuing effort to keep end users safe and aware when they are visiting a non-secure website, Google has announced that starting in July 2018, these sites will be clearly identified in the Chrome browser.  The change will coincide with the release of Chrome 68 and will be across all platforms as well as Chrome OS.  A non-secure website is noted as http:// when you visit the site while a secure, encrypted site is noted as https:// in the URL.

The official announcement should not come as a surprise.  Google has already been urging sites to move to secure deployments with changes in how page ranking is done for secure versus non-secure sites.  This is the culmination of that effort.

A new update to Chrome for Android has been released into the Play Store, bringing a fix to a rendering crash that was impacting some users.  The new version is build 64.0.3282.137 for those keeping score at home.  This update follows the original release of Chrome 64 for Android last month.

This update is purely a bug fix release, addressing a rendering crash that was impacting a small number of users as well as a fix for issues around geo location notifiers.  Otherwise, there are general bug fixes and improvements in the update.  You can read the full change log here but there are not any new features.

One of the hidden gems in Gmail are the labs.  The labs are unsupported, experimental features that may make their way into the mainstream support for the email service.  For the most part, I don’t recommend using beta or unsupported features but there is one that has been there a long time and Google seems to continue to improve it.

The feature is the ability to enable an unread message counter on the Gmail tab in the Chrome browser on Windows, MacOS or Linux as well as in Chrome OS.

Unread Counter in Gmail Tab in Chrome

In this How To, I’ll show you were to go in Gmail to enable the feature so you can try it out for yourself.